Nickname filter is so aggressive that I can't register with my given name but any Unicode is fine

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jimkoen

jimkoen

Hello all,

I originally registered in these forums to ask about using bsdinstalls automated install functionality.
I'm somewhat confused by how aggressive the nickname filtering of this forum is.
I was unable to use any of the regular handles I normally use elsewhere ("jimkoen", "milou", "awesome_milou" and even my given name),
because they contain disallowed words, but any unicode seems fine (as you can see in my nickname).

I'm apparently not the only one that has ran into this problem:

forums.freebsd.org

username problem

I tried to make a username based upon my first and middle names. I tried Lloyd followed by random numbers, Arthur followed by numbers. both times it says my names are disallowed words? what gives? Does this forum mandate Dog and Cat names and have a hatred for common names?
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

So uhh, this is negative feedback on that part.

Cheers!
 
Okay so I just checked: not all unicode characters are allowed. Upon discovering that emojis are ok, I was hoping that I could be a bit of a troll by crafting an illicit nickname using invisible unicode glyphs, but mos of the ones I tried are filtered out. If it's effective as a spam deterrence, as mentioned in the linked thread thats cool I suppose, but I'm suprised that spammers don't just create thousands of accounts with poop emojis in the nickname (that's an allowed character btw).
 
Oh. I just assumed you were another who had an i.e Chinese, Japanese, etc username. You just come up as a bunch of "glyph not found" boxes for me ;)

I'm fine with that. I have not yet learned Chinese/Japanese and I am also not really a fan of emoticons within text. Boxes are fine at keeping the content spacing without the wasteful rendering overhead.

One day, it would be fun to write a browser plugin, so your username would show as i.e DogChickenThumbsUp (or whatever emoticons you are using?)
 
kpedersen said:
Oh. I just assumed you were another who had an i.e Chinese, Japanese, etc username. You just come up as a bunch of "glyph not found" boxes for me ;)

I'm fine with that. I have not yet learned Chinese/Japanese and I am also not really a fan of emoticons within text. Boxes are fine at keeping the content spacing without the wasteful rendering overhead.

One day, it would be fun to write a browser plugin, so your username would show as i.e DogChickenThumbsUp (or whatever emoticons you are using?)
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bakul said:
Can't you go to https://forums.freebsd.org/account/account-details and try to change your name there? They ask for a reason so presumably some forum-god™ will take a look?
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It doesn't give me the option unfortunately :(
kpedersen said:
Ah, thanks. I would have missed out!

I assumed it was going to be something a bit more edgy ;)
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Given such an aggressive filter and the age of this forum, I was assuming I'd be insta-banned if I just used 3 poop emojis, so I had to improvise :p
 
On Discord, I discovered that there's a lot of ppl who don't really know what would be considered offensive in US... on Discord, I had a conversation with someone whose username was, of all things, KKK... I asked him why he picked that username, and the guy fessed up that it's just the initials of his name IRL!

I had to show him a Wikipedia article about Ku Klux Klan, and explain that in the US, the abbreviation KKK is most commonly associated with that group. Yes, it's a famously right-leaning group that made a name for itself through quite a few acts of violence with questionable motivations. So, because of that history, it's the politically correct thing in the US to consider KKK to be something offensive. I stopped at that, because I could see that the guy just genuinely didn't know much, but understood what I was trying to tell him...

I personally do disagree with poop emojis... those are normally used to lazily express frustration with something that you can't do much about. Sometimes, you gotta step back, and ask yourself: What are you trying to accomplish by using expressions like that? A mindless tantrum gives others a rather negative quick impression of you.
 
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